Dec 30, 2025
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History of Advertising and Capitalism
by Doniphan Blair
The first issue of InfoArt, 1994,where this article first appeared, also included articles about NAFTA and functional capitalism. photo N. BlairNote: First published in InfoArt Magazine, Oakland, June, 1994, but still supremely relevant today.
What Is Advertising?
To some, advertising is an unnecessary assault on our senses—typified by a loud-mouthed boor hard selling something we don't need or a billboard blemishing a beautiful landscape. To others, it is an unnecessary economic burden—inflating the price of everything we buy. When occasionally asked how I could live in the less-than-democratic political climate of Peru for almost a year, I would answer: freedom from advertising.
But advertising takes many forms, aside from the mass version which defines the term today. In the highlands around Cusco, Peru, aside from the tiny red Coca-Cola signs, there are cultural, public service and political announcements. More importantly, the women wear fantastically colorful skirts and shawls. Just as critical in Peru as on Park Avenue, fashion and body adornment are also advertising, since they broadcast our personal and cultural identity, marriageability, tribe, etc. Thus, advertising includes all human communication that overtly attempts to elicit or facilitate a transaction, action or reaction. Beginning where objective information leaves off and stretching until subjective art takes over, advertising is a hybrid of information and aesthetics that can be traced back to the non-camouflage markings on animals.
While few social interactions take place without some advertising, industrial democratic societies are built around and by it. Mass produced products cannot be sold by word of mouth, just outside the factory gates—they must be shipped to distant consumers, who must first know of them. Similarly, an industrialized democratic society cannot function without competition or the ability of competitors to offer alternatives. Mass advertising, then, is freedom of speech, long distance.
Product advertising has long been with us: beautiful signage has been excavated from the ruins of Pompeii, religions have built large buildings covered with symbols, etc. But modern advertising began with the Industrial Revolution, filling up the expanding newspapers and periodicals with ads and financing them with ad revenue. This created the basic feedback loop of information and desire that powered capitalism, built the railroads to deliver the goods and expanded our economic circle from village to nation to global economy. It also spawned our mass entertainment and telecommunication culture. While each new media was a gift from technology and capitalism to the arts, it generally had to pay its own way through advertising.
Everything Begins with Identity: word art by Doniphan Blair. photo D. BlairThe Evolution of Capitalism
Capitalism has evolved through four basic levels since Adam Smith suggested that governments loosen up their monopolistic hold on society and let business go to work. Inventors and entrepreneurs teamed up to create the Industrial Revolution (#1), which vastly increased the "The Wealth of Nations," just as Smith predicted. But it occurred in societies in the throes of feudalism, colonialism and slavery, fueling the fire of traditional power struggles. The birth of modern industrial economies was not a pretty picture—considering the human and environmental exploitation that accompanied it. Nevertheless, capitalism did provide a portion of the goods and technologies needed to maintain and organize our rapidly expanding and increasingly complex societies.
Considering human desire, it's not surprising that the volatile mix of technology and capital vested enormous power in the hands of a few and that they followed Darwin's first axiom of evolution, "survival of the fittest." If government had not gotten back into the business of regulating business, the Monopoly Capitalism (#2) that emerged in the 19th century would have undoubtedly expanded the feudalism it maintained in factory towns and on plantations across the world. Marx suggested the state take over completely, but politicians were little better at divining the complexities of modern economies. The protectionism of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, for example, exacerbated the Crash of '29 which, in turn, motivated Germany and Japan to seek monopolistic control over all sectors of their societies, with disastrous results.
Nevertheless, the lure of monopolism has persisted. But as IBM finally learned in the early '80s, after refusing to head the wake-up call of an antitrust suit, without the diversity and innovation of democracy and competition, monopolies eventually grow too big and stupid to even beat out a garage start-up. While the downsizing of Big Blue doesn't speak highly of the innovative abilities of the information industries, when faced with similar legislation, Bell Telephone voluntarily diversified and prospered.
The Evolution of Advertising
Early capitalists assumed they were the only game in town and early advertising followed suit, simply announcing goods or services in the traditional placard style. But even if governments hadn't stepped back in to counterweight Monopoly Capitalism, nature abhors a vacuum and a competing force eventually comes along. Once they realize that they are dependent on a single economy, adversarial entities are pragmatically compelled to attract business through advertising rather than by brutalizing the market, consumers and each other. And with two products of similar value, sales are driven by what the products and their ads look like, as well as what they actually are. Thus, capitalism followed Darwin's second axiom of evolution—the emergence of secondary sexual characteristics—into Competitive Capitalism (#3), with its colorful, status or sex related packaging and advertising.
A butcher shop sign, circa 79 AD, Pompeii, Rome. illo courtesy Italian National MuseumHuman beings and cultures evolved out of the same environment that produced peacocks with their tails, fireflies with their luminescence and flowers with their color and scent. We also need to attract the attention of others for mating and other social interaction. Genetic evolution may have designed out our non-utilitarian appendages and markings as we became "thinking" animals, but as soon as we became "self-identifying" animals, we reinvented them to define and advertise ourselves. In fact, Darwin didn't have to journey to the Galapagos to study evolution; he could have researched Victorian England or his own closet. Thankfully, the debilitating corsets his wife was obliged to wear, in accord with her tribal culture, have disappeared, due to the groundbreaking re-emergence of women as an independent political and economic force and to modern fashion's breakneck pace—accelerated by advertising. Nevertheless, a few painful customs remain—understandably, some of us will sacrifice almost anything for sexual advertising.
The New Folk Culture
In today's mass produced society, we frequently make aesthetic statements and accessorize our identities through purchases. Those who blame marketing mavens for manipulating us fail to credit free will or explain why manufacturers invest in market research. Advertising may sway small children, but functional adults, by definition, only let it inspire behavior if it correctly defines choices they're already considering.
Therefore, to function efficiently, advertising must speak our language, reflecting and magnifying traits and styles culled from the overallculture. Fashions, fads and culture can emerge from an artist's studio, an entrepreneur's imagination or the lower classes, as rap music, baggy jeans and baseball caps attest. We are all in this together, wired into Marshall McLuhan's "Global Village" by our telecommunications networks, which scour the planet for the hottest new thing to titillate our fancies, sell themselves and feed the maw of our evolving and expanding culture. "High" culture still defines the historical foundations and future possibilities—and advertising also borrows from it, while underwriting its productions. But advertising has become our new folk culture, the cultural wing of a consumer society.
In this high tech socio-economic setting, the dividing line between information, advertising and art is fading fast. We now have cop documentaries with superb production values and cop shows with jiggly camerawork, Geraldo Rivera-style, audience interactive, talk shows with local dramas more fascinating than soaps and newspapers and newscasts as colorful as ads. Advertising, in turn, is borrowing from political imagery or avant-garde art, as in the recent Benetton, Absolut Vodka or Coca-Cola campaigns.
Meanwhile, Hollywood straddles the advertising/art frontier, doing product placement and licensing and making feature length commercials for American culture, to stoke the furnaces of this fantastically expensive, but equally fantastic, mass art form, which is pouring the foundations for a common global culture. If Jurassic Park is not currently on view in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, it is undoubtedly the coming attraction.
Like any significant aspect of the human experience, advertising has been interpreted through art, from pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstien to Jeff Koons—who has taken to hanging verbatim liquor ads in museums. As art incorporates advertising and information and information media includes more ads and design, advertising cannot help but inch towards more honesty and art, simply to compete with news and culture for our attention.
Woman's movement poster from around 1900, England. illo: unknownThe hard sell is increasingly ineffective in a data rich environment. Aside from impugning our intelligence and inviting litigation, the more an advertiser hypes their product the farther it has to fall if doesn't live up to its image. Manufactures hoping to make a killing before the chickens get home evidently haven't researched their market and care little about the bigger profits of quality products and repeat or word of mouth customers. Generic brands are good examples of informed businesses correlating product with image and giving consumers what they want: better prices (with its perennial appeal to bottomline survival) without the hype (although they still advertise).
Conscious Capitalism: Level Four
Our current information revolution is not the first: there was writing some 3,000 years ago, movable type in the 1400s (or earlier in Korea and China), and then telegraph, telephone, radio and television, in mind-boggling succession from 1850 to 1950 - due to the capitalist induced speed of research, manufacturing and marketing. But with the arrival of the microchips, satellites, cellular phones, faxes, fiber optics, intranets, email and the ongoing deluge of cable channels, new magazines and other information bi-ways, we are approaching the steep end of the curve. In twenty years, the entire memory of all of today's computers may be condensed, through molecular circuitry, into one laptop. Evidently, we have earned the right to capitalize the "Information Revolution" but are we really capitalizing on it? Are we saying anything new or different? Sure, the hardware and software are in place for putting a person on the moon or a television in every home but is the wetware—the ideas, images and information—up to the speed we need?
As the Information Revolution ramps up, human choices are being increasingly motivated by Conscious Selection, Darwin's undiscovered but implied third axiom of evolution. One hundred years ago we bought Campbell's soup because it was all there was (Monopoly Capitalism). Fifty years later, we selected it over competing brands because the packaging looked good (Competitive Capitalism). Today, some of us will only buy it after reading the ingredients and checking for a recycled logo (Conscious Capitalism). Although our primitive needs and impulses are still very much with us—in terms of price, packaging and other issues—the mind has become our biggest marketing zone.
While the environmentalism of industry is frequently more style than substance, many businesses are already adapting aspects of Conscious Capitalism. American business leads in personal computers and other information technology and some are emulating the Japanese example of non-hierarchical communication teams and streamlined middle management that was developed by an American, W. Edwards Deming. Business is becoming more conscious of consumers desires, the environment and their employees' needs and cultures. Many have little choice: employee turnover and retraining are expensive, as are environmental clean-up and discrimination suits. But the bottomline is: top down production and poorly researched or designed products are poison to an informed market.
Waste, whether in bureaucracy, tariffs, poor design or a less then enthused workforce, will have be reduced by those who wish to compete in the global economies of NAFTA and GATT. Because we are all in this economy together, fair compensation is also crucial - after deducting for legitimate profits, research and costs. Unless the total earnings from all the work done worldwide does not approximate the total cost of all the goods and services produced, the economic circle is broken and consumers cannot afford to perform the reverse "trickle-up" Reaganomics that drive profits.
American Woman's Journal ad from around 1880. illo courtesy Smithsonian MuseumThe revolutions of the 20th century closed half the world's markets for three quarters of a century and will probably take another half-of-a-century to correct. They were motivated by working people understandably interested in obtaining what they made themselves or heard about through advertising. Most care little who owns the actual title to industry if they are getting a fair deal. If capitalism is indeed a more functional system, it now has a second chance to prove it to the workers of the world. Ironically, troubled industries, like the airlines, have stockholders that are more than happy to let the workers acquire the means of production—but through employee buy-outs rather then revolutions.
Cheaper, longer lasting or better designed products and more efficient services build a more productive society by freeing up funds for savings or other purchases. Governments should maintain a level playing field so that all businesses and institutions and peoples and cultures can compete as equals, but Conscious Capitalism cannot be instituted entirely by decree. Since business is the only force on the planet of sufficient size to effect the required change, Conscious Capitalism must beat out its competitors in the market place.
Evolutionary Advertising
The success of a good product or service—one that benefits society at large as well as individuals in particular—rests largely on its ability to communicate. The first step is informing the public what a business or entity does and where it takes place at an appropriate scale: a sign for a corner store, a saturation campaign for a corporation. But Evolutionary Advertising further suggests using identity, advertising and the information it conveys to place a product or service at the front edge of our rapidly evolving culture. That way, it stakes out a bigger piece of the future, enjoys a longer shelf life (good design can be used longer and in more marketing venues) and better identification and brand loyalty.
Although advertising must operate within the constraints of budget and other inevitable compromises, it is cost-effective to invest in
information, art and the future. As the Information Revolution accelerates, these investments will only appreciate quicker.
Although history tells us small businesses and start-ups are where critical new inventions and innovations emerge, they cannot afford massive coverage. But by balancing ad placement, printing and production costs with quality design and concept through Evolutionary Advertising, a limited budget can be employed more intelligently. If it causes a beneficial product or service to fail, ill-conceived marketing is another waste of resources.
The Global Economy
Business is instinctively supply-side multicultural—it naturally cares less about language and culture than about bigger markets and profits. In addition to accommodating the culture of their consumers and selling through distant cultures, modern businesses must integrate the cultures of investors, managers, labor and raw material producers.
Andy Warhol's infamous 'Tomato Soup' combines advertising, illustration and high art and set the tone for the Pop Art movement still vibrant world wide including in China. image courtesy MOMA NYBut capitalism also has pernicious unicultural tendencies, as illustrated by Monopoly Capitalism. Mass produced goods look alike, mass advertising and transportation deliver them to everyone and multinationals are like dinosaurs that can destroy entire societies with an inadvertent or premeditated flick of their tail. Modern development—over-dependency on industrialized foods, fertilizers, medicines and other items—is one of the greatest threats to sustainable local cultures worldwide. This is dislodging an even greater avalanche of dislocated individuals that could wreak even more havoc with the global economy as they migrate to the world's industrial centers.
After seven long years of GATT negotiations, the last battle was between Hollywood and France over an 11% movie tax. Ultimately, it had to be deleted from the agreement. While French and Mexican farmers, among others, argued that free trade would destroy their local culture, their national representatives choose to compromise because their overall societies would benefit--the Mexican underclass desperately needs cheap American grain to feed themselves.
The French adore Hollywood, making its product the top grosser in their country, but they rightly observe that they cannot sacrifice their overall culture. Without a different culture, how can they develop the alternative goods, services or ideas to trade with us or compel us to be more creative? State-sponsored film industries have produced many great directors, some now working in Hollywood. Judging from the disaster of Monopoly Capitalism, few would benefit from converting the global economy to one massive uniculture. Individuality, freedom and competition drive a much greater, more innovative and more profitable economy.
Capitalism, Democracy and Multiculturalism
Freedom of trade cannot function without democracy, which, in turn, depends on the freedom of ideas and culture. Capitalism, democracy and multiculturalism are the three mutually interdependent legs of a modern society, which only operate at peak capacity in the long term if they are equals and learn from each other. Business becomes more democratic by flattening its command structure, market researching how to provide the public what it wants and abiding by law. Government becomes more business-like through cost-efficiency reviews, eliminating bureaucracy and introducing competition. And they both must integrate with culture to provide quality of life, without which the ends don't justify the means.
A handsomely designed automobile, telephone or even urinal can be aesthetically pleasing or even art, as Marcel Duchamp proclaimed when he unveiled his urinal and other "ready-mades" shortly after World War One. All creation requires some design and capitalism is no exception.
Since much of it is "bad art," it could benefit by being regarded as an art form. But the "high art" of capitalism comes when the investor, producer, designer, employee, raw material provider, advertiser and consumer can relate in one efficient, mutually beneficial and environmentally sustainable circle.
Communication is automatically multicultural if it is two way. Those who wish to communicate must not only learn the language of those they are addressing but respect it. While mass media is becoming increasingly centralized, the new information technologies and mini-media—local papers, intranets, etc.—allow us to relate to most of the little cultures that make up and invigorate a mass society and better serve and learn from them. Mass communication can also bring alternative views to problematic sectors of society rather then just sucking out images for the evening news. Public interest advertising, such as the successful "Designated Driver" campaign, offers spectacular opportunities for inspiring social change in the Information Age. Alternative media and multicultural communication forums in societies beset by civil strife could provide the information required by individuals to make intelligent choices.
'A Revolution in Advertising' campaign for Oakland's forward-looking A Media Graphics & Web studio. photo N. BlairCompetition and History
The history of humanity is largely defined by competition between large forces. The nation-state ended the absolute power of religion in the Middle Ages and then acceded to the expanding business sector.
Capitalism and communism collaborated to defeat fascism, but now that communism has passed from the world stage, what will compel capitalism to redesign itself? How can we recoup the massive cost of the Cold War and the even greater investment humanity has made in modern civilization without developing politically, culturally and economically functional societies?
The Information Revolution is a key. The fallout from its partnership with capitalism tells us more about what's happening at the other end of our transactions, enabling us to adjust our own actions more efficiently. By blatantly extolling capitalism's positive attributes, mass advertising has established a precedent and image that capitalism now has to live up to. Since contemporary capitalism operates increasingly through the mind, it depends on empowering individuals to choose the best product on the merits. A powerful individual inevitably seeks out their own identity and culture, which could offset the alienation from self, society and nature endemic since the Industrial Revolution. In this manner, Western Civilization may regain some of the community and socially integrated design found in the altiplano villages in Peru.
Conscious Capitalism, in partnership with Evolutionary Advertising, has the potential to advance design and environmental production, qualityinformation and art, democracy and multiculturalism, while generating profits. Hopefully it can do so in time to deal with the onrushing implications of the Third Millennia.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Apr 16, 2018 - 11:29 PM
by Doniphan Blair
The first issue of InfoArt, 1994,where this article first appeared, also included articles about NAFTA and functional capitalism. photo N. BlairWhat Is Advertising?
To some, advertising is an unnecessary assault on our senses—typified by a loud-mouthed boor hard selling something we don't need or a billboard blemishing a beautiful landscape. To others, it is an unnecessary economic burden—inflating the price of everything we buy. When occasionally asked how I could live in the less-than-democratic political climate of Peru for almost a year, I would answer: freedom from advertising.
But advertising takes many forms, aside from the mass version which defines the term today. In the highlands around Cusco, Peru, aside from the tiny red Coca-Cola signs, there are cultural, public service and political announcements. More importantly, the women wear fantastically colorful skirts and shawls. Just as critical in Peru as on Park Avenue, fashion and body adornment are also advertising, since they broadcast our personal and cultural identity, marriageability, tribe, etc. Thus, advertising includes all human communication that overtly attempts to elicit or facilitate a transaction, action or reaction. Beginning where objective information leaves off and stretching until subjective art takes over, advertising is a hybrid of information and aesthetics that can be traced back to the non-camouflage markings on animals.
While few social interactions take place without some advertising, industrial democratic societies are built around and by it. Mass produced products cannot be sold by word of mouth, just outside the factory gates—they must be shipped to distant consumers, who must first know of them. Similarly, an industrialized democratic society cannot function without competition or the ability of competitors to offer alternatives. Mass advertising, then, is freedom of speech, long distance.
Product advertising has long been with us: beautiful signage has been excavated from the ruins of Pompeii, religions have built large buildings covered with symbols, etc. But modern advertising began with the Industrial Revolution, filling up the expanding newspapers and periodicals with ads and financing them with ad revenue. This created the basic feedback loop of information and desire that powered capitalism, built the railroads to deliver the goods and expanded our economic circle from village to nation to global economy. It also spawned our mass entertainment and telecommunication culture. While each new media was a gift from technology and capitalism to the arts, it generally had to pay its own way through advertising.
Everything Begins with Identity: word art by Doniphan Blair. photo D. BlairCapitalism has evolved through four basic levels since Adam Smith suggested that governments loosen up their monopolistic hold on society and let business go to work. Inventors and entrepreneurs teamed up to create the Industrial Revolution (#1), which vastly increased the "The Wealth of Nations," just as Smith predicted. But it occurred in societies in the throes of feudalism, colonialism and slavery, fueling the fire of traditional power struggles. The birth of modern industrial economies was not a pretty picture—considering the human and environmental exploitation that accompanied it. Nevertheless, capitalism did provide a portion of the goods and technologies needed to maintain and organize our rapidly expanding and increasingly complex societies.
Considering human desire, it's not surprising that the volatile mix of technology and capital vested enormous power in the hands of a few and that they followed Darwin's first axiom of evolution, "survival of the fittest." If government had not gotten back into the business of regulating business, the Monopoly Capitalism (#2) that emerged in the 19th century would have undoubtedly expanded the feudalism it maintained in factory towns and on plantations across the world. Marx suggested the state take over completely, but politicians were little better at divining the complexities of modern economies. The protectionism of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, for example, exacerbated the Crash of '29 which, in turn, motivated Germany and Japan to seek monopolistic control over all sectors of their societies, with disastrous results.
Nevertheless, the lure of monopolism has persisted. But as IBM finally learned in the early '80s, after refusing to head the wake-up call of an antitrust suit, without the diversity and innovation of democracy and competition, monopolies eventually grow too big and stupid to even beat out a garage start-up. While the downsizing of Big Blue doesn't speak highly of the innovative abilities of the information industries, when faced with similar legislation, Bell Telephone voluntarily diversified and prospered.
The Evolution of Advertising
Early capitalists assumed they were the only game in town and early advertising followed suit, simply announcing goods or services in the traditional placard style. But even if governments hadn't stepped back in to counterweight Monopoly Capitalism, nature abhors a vacuum and a competing force eventually comes along. Once they realize that they are dependent on a single economy, adversarial entities are pragmatically compelled to attract business through advertising rather than by brutalizing the market, consumers and each other. And with two products of similar value, sales are driven by what the products and their ads look like, as well as what they actually are. Thus, capitalism followed Darwin's second axiom of evolution—the emergence of secondary sexual characteristics—into Competitive Capitalism (#3), with its colorful, status or sex related packaging and advertising.
A butcher shop sign, circa 79 AD, Pompeii, Rome. illo courtesy Italian National MuseumThe New Folk Culture
In today's mass produced society, we frequently make aesthetic statements and accessorize our identities through purchases. Those who blame marketing mavens for manipulating us fail to credit free will or explain why manufacturers invest in market research. Advertising may sway small children, but functional adults, by definition, only let it inspire behavior if it correctly defines choices they're already considering.
Therefore, to function efficiently, advertising must speak our language, reflecting and magnifying traits and styles culled from the overallculture. Fashions, fads and culture can emerge from an artist's studio, an entrepreneur's imagination or the lower classes, as rap music, baggy jeans and baseball caps attest. We are all in this together, wired into Marshall McLuhan's "Global Village" by our telecommunications networks, which scour the planet for the hottest new thing to titillate our fancies, sell themselves and feed the maw of our evolving and expanding culture. "High" culture still defines the historical foundations and future possibilities—and advertising also borrows from it, while underwriting its productions. But advertising has become our new folk culture, the cultural wing of a consumer society.
In this high tech socio-economic setting, the dividing line between information, advertising and art is fading fast. We now have cop documentaries with superb production values and cop shows with jiggly camerawork, Geraldo Rivera-style, audience interactive, talk shows with local dramas more fascinating than soaps and newspapers and newscasts as colorful as ads. Advertising, in turn, is borrowing from political imagery or avant-garde art, as in the recent Benetton, Absolut Vodka or Coca-Cola campaigns.
Meanwhile, Hollywood straddles the advertising/art frontier, doing product placement and licensing and making feature length commercials for American culture, to stoke the furnaces of this fantastically expensive, but equally fantastic, mass art form, which is pouring the foundations for a common global culture. If Jurassic Park is not currently on view in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, it is undoubtedly the coming attraction.
Like any significant aspect of the human experience, advertising has been interpreted through art, from pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstien to Jeff Koons—who has taken to hanging verbatim liquor ads in museums. As art incorporates advertising and information and information media includes more ads and design, advertising cannot help but inch towards more honesty and art, simply to compete with news and culture for our attention.
Woman's movement poster from around 1900, England. illo: unknownConscious Capitalism: Level Four
Our current information revolution is not the first: there was writing some 3,000 years ago, movable type in the 1400s (or earlier in Korea and China), and then telegraph, telephone, radio and television, in mind-boggling succession from 1850 to 1950 - due to the capitalist induced speed of research, manufacturing and marketing. But with the arrival of the microchips, satellites, cellular phones, faxes, fiber optics, intranets, email and the ongoing deluge of cable channels, new magazines and other information bi-ways, we are approaching the steep end of the curve. In twenty years, the entire memory of all of today's computers may be condensed, through molecular circuitry, into one laptop. Evidently, we have earned the right to capitalize the "Information Revolution" but are we really capitalizing on it? Are we saying anything new or different? Sure, the hardware and software are in place for putting a person on the moon or a television in every home but is the wetware—the ideas, images and information—up to the speed we need?
As the Information Revolution ramps up, human choices are being increasingly motivated by Conscious Selection, Darwin's undiscovered but implied third axiom of evolution. One hundred years ago we bought Campbell's soup because it was all there was (Monopoly Capitalism). Fifty years later, we selected it over competing brands because the packaging looked good (Competitive Capitalism). Today, some of us will only buy it after reading the ingredients and checking for a recycled logo (Conscious Capitalism). Although our primitive needs and impulses are still very much with us—in terms of price, packaging and other issues—the mind has become our biggest marketing zone.
While the environmentalism of industry is frequently more style than substance, many businesses are already adapting aspects of Conscious Capitalism. American business leads in personal computers and other information technology and some are emulating the Japanese example of non-hierarchical communication teams and streamlined middle management that was developed by an American, W. Edwards Deming. Business is becoming more conscious of consumers desires, the environment and their employees' needs and cultures. Many have little choice: employee turnover and retraining are expensive, as are environmental clean-up and discrimination suits. But the bottomline is: top down production and poorly researched or designed products are poison to an informed market.
Waste, whether in bureaucracy, tariffs, poor design or a less then enthused workforce, will have be reduced by those who wish to compete in the global economies of NAFTA and GATT. Because we are all in this economy together, fair compensation is also crucial - after deducting for legitimate profits, research and costs. Unless the total earnings from all the work done worldwide does not approximate the total cost of all the goods and services produced, the economic circle is broken and consumers cannot afford to perform the reverse "trickle-up" Reaganomics that drive profits.
American Woman's Journal ad from around 1880. illo courtesy Smithsonian MuseumCheaper, longer lasting or better designed products and more efficient services build a more productive society by freeing up funds for savings or other purchases. Governments should maintain a level playing field so that all businesses and institutions and peoples and cultures can compete as equals, but Conscious Capitalism cannot be instituted entirely by decree. Since business is the only force on the planet of sufficient size to effect the required change, Conscious Capitalism must beat out its competitors in the market place.
Evolutionary Advertising
The success of a good product or service—one that benefits society at large as well as individuals in particular—rests largely on its ability to communicate. The first step is informing the public what a business or entity does and where it takes place at an appropriate scale: a sign for a corner store, a saturation campaign for a corporation. But Evolutionary Advertising further suggests using identity, advertising and the information it conveys to place a product or service at the front edge of our rapidly evolving culture. That way, it stakes out a bigger piece of the future, enjoys a longer shelf life (good design can be used longer and in more marketing venues) and better identification and brand loyalty.
Although advertising must operate within the constraints of budget and other inevitable compromises, it is cost-effective to invest in
information, art and the future. As the Information Revolution accelerates, these investments will only appreciate quicker.
Although history tells us small businesses and start-ups are where critical new inventions and innovations emerge, they cannot afford massive coverage. But by balancing ad placement, printing and production costs with quality design and concept through Evolutionary Advertising, a limited budget can be employed more intelligently. If it causes a beneficial product or service to fail, ill-conceived marketing is another waste of resources.
The Global Economy
Business is instinctively supply-side multicultural—it naturally cares less about language and culture than about bigger markets and profits. In addition to accommodating the culture of their consumers and selling through distant cultures, modern businesses must integrate the cultures of investors, managers, labor and raw material producers.
Andy Warhol's infamous 'Tomato Soup' combines advertising, illustration and high art and set the tone for the Pop Art movement still vibrant world wide including in China. image courtesy MOMA NYAfter seven long years of GATT negotiations, the last battle was between Hollywood and France over an 11% movie tax. Ultimately, it had to be deleted from the agreement. While French and Mexican farmers, among others, argued that free trade would destroy their local culture, their national representatives choose to compromise because their overall societies would benefit--the Mexican underclass desperately needs cheap American grain to feed themselves.
The French adore Hollywood, making its product the top grosser in their country, but they rightly observe that they cannot sacrifice their overall culture. Without a different culture, how can they develop the alternative goods, services or ideas to trade with us or compel us to be more creative? State-sponsored film industries have produced many great directors, some now working in Hollywood. Judging from the disaster of Monopoly Capitalism, few would benefit from converting the global economy to one massive uniculture. Individuality, freedom and competition drive a much greater, more innovative and more profitable economy.
Capitalism, Democracy and Multiculturalism
Freedom of trade cannot function without democracy, which, in turn, depends on the freedom of ideas and culture. Capitalism, democracy and multiculturalism are the three mutually interdependent legs of a modern society, which only operate at peak capacity in the long term if they are equals and learn from each other. Business becomes more democratic by flattening its command structure, market researching how to provide the public what it wants and abiding by law. Government becomes more business-like through cost-efficiency reviews, eliminating bureaucracy and introducing competition. And they both must integrate with culture to provide quality of life, without which the ends don't justify the means.
A handsomely designed automobile, telephone or even urinal can be aesthetically pleasing or even art, as Marcel Duchamp proclaimed when he unveiled his urinal and other "ready-mades" shortly after World War One. All creation requires some design and capitalism is no exception.
Since much of it is "bad art," it could benefit by being regarded as an art form. But the "high art" of capitalism comes when the investor, producer, designer, employee, raw material provider, advertiser and consumer can relate in one efficient, mutually beneficial and environmentally sustainable circle.
Communication is automatically multicultural if it is two way. Those who wish to communicate must not only learn the language of those they are addressing but respect it. While mass media is becoming increasingly centralized, the new information technologies and mini-media—local papers, intranets, etc.—allow us to relate to most of the little cultures that make up and invigorate a mass society and better serve and learn from them. Mass communication can also bring alternative views to problematic sectors of society rather then just sucking out images for the evening news. Public interest advertising, such as the successful "Designated Driver" campaign, offers spectacular opportunities for inspiring social change in the Information Age. Alternative media and multicultural communication forums in societies beset by civil strife could provide the information required by individuals to make intelligent choices.
'A Revolution in Advertising' campaign for Oakland's forward-looking A Media Graphics & Web studio. photo N. BlairThe history of humanity is largely defined by competition between large forces. The nation-state ended the absolute power of religion in the Middle Ages and then acceded to the expanding business sector.
Capitalism and communism collaborated to defeat fascism, but now that communism has passed from the world stage, what will compel capitalism to redesign itself? How can we recoup the massive cost of the Cold War and the even greater investment humanity has made in modern civilization without developing politically, culturally and economically functional societies?
The Information Revolution is a key. The fallout from its partnership with capitalism tells us more about what's happening at the other end of our transactions, enabling us to adjust our own actions more efficiently. By blatantly extolling capitalism's positive attributes, mass advertising has established a precedent and image that capitalism now has to live up to. Since contemporary capitalism operates increasingly through the mind, it depends on empowering individuals to choose the best product on the merits. A powerful individual inevitably seeks out their own identity and culture, which could offset the alienation from self, society and nature endemic since the Industrial Revolution. In this manner, Western Civilization may regain some of the community and socially integrated design found in the altiplano villages in Peru.
Conscious Capitalism, in partnership with Evolutionary Advertising, has the potential to advance design and environmental production, qualityinformation and art, democracy and multiculturalism, while generating profits. Hopefully it can do so in time to deal with the onrushing implications of the Third Millennia.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Apr 16, 2018 - 11:29 PM
